Hero of the Underground: A Memoir

This New York Times bestselling gritty memoir Hero of the Underground offers a no-holds-barred look at the twisted underbelly of a seemingly perfect life. Jason Peter, an All-American football player, captain of the National Champion Nebraska Cornhuskers, first round NFL draft pick. . . and heroin addict.

I wasn't afraid of death.

How could I be? I lived under death's shadow every day. When you swallow sixty Vicodin, twenty sleeping pills, drink a bottle of vodka, and still survive, a certain sense of invulnerability stays with you.

When you continually use drugs with the kind of reckless determination that I did, the limit to how much heroin or crack you can ingest is not defined by dollar amounts but by the amounts your body can withstand without experiencing a seizure or respiratory failure. . . .

I found myself contemplating death again. Only this time I wasn't going to leave it to chance. I was going to buy a gun, load the thing, place the barrel in my mouth, and blow my fucking brains out.

"Had Hunter Thompson been a football player instead of a fan, this is the book he'd have written. Flat-out, mash-your-face-in-the-dirt amazing." --Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight

Author: Jason Peter,Tony O'Neill
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Published: 06/23/2009
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780312561031

About the Author

JASON PETER grew up in Middletown, New Jersey. He was an All American and a member of three National Championship football teams at the University of Nebraska, co-captaining the championship team. He was also a National Football League first-round draft pick by the Carolina Panthers, where he played for four years before injuries forced him to retire. He is married and lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he co-hosted a sports radio program, The Spread, for ESPN.

TONY O'NEILL is a poet and novelist whose books include Down and Out on Murder Mile and Digging the Vein. He lives in New York.

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